for right under my mit, coiled, suggestive and pleadin', was
one of the tug's heavin' lines, 'bout a three-eighths size. I slips
a runnin' knot in the end and divides the coils, crouchin' behind the
deck-house till we come abeam of him, then I straightened, give it a
swinging heave, and the noose sailed up and settled over him fine and
daisy.

"I jerked back, and Oily Heegan did a high dive from Rush Street that
was a geometrical joy. He hit kind of amateurish, doin' what we used
to call a 'belly-buster' back home, but quite satisfyin' for a maiden
effort, and I reeled him in astern.

"Your Chicago man ain't a gamey fish. He come up tame and squirting
sewage like a dissolute porpoise, while I played him out where he'd
get the thrash of the propeller.

"'Help,' he yells, 'I'm a drownding.'

"'Ten dollars and costs," says I, lettin' him under again. 'Do you
know who you're drinkin' with this time, hey?'

"I reckon the astonishment of the mob was equal to Heegan's; anyhow
I'm told that we was favoured with such quietness that my voice
sounded four blocks, simply achin' with satisfactions. Then
pandemonium tore loose, but I was so engrosed in sweet converse I
never heard it or noticed that the 'Detroit' had slid through the
draw by a hair, and we was bound for the blue and smilin' lake.

"'For God's sake, lemme up,' says Heegan, splashin' along and
look-in' strangly. I hauls him in where he wouldn't miss any of my
ironies, and says:--

"'I just can't do it, Oily--it's wash day. You're plumb nasty with
boycotts and picketin's and compulsory arbitrations. I'm goin' to
clean you up,' and I sozzled him under like a wet shirt.

"I drug him out again and continues:--

"'This is Chinamen's work, Oily, but I lost my pride in the
Bridewell, thanks to you. It's tough on St. Louis to laundry you up
stream this way, but maybe the worst of your heresies 'll be purified
when they get that far.' You know the Chicago River runs up hill out
of Lake Michigan through the drainage canal and into the St. Louis
waterworks. Sure it does--most unnatural stream I ever see about
direction and smells.

"I was gettin' a good deal of enjoyment and infections out of him
when old man Badrich ran back enamelled with blood and passe tomato
juice, the red in his white hair makin' his top look like one of
these fancy ice-cream drinks you get at a soda fountain.

"'Here! here! you'll kill him,' says he, so I hauled him aboard,
drippi